It is important that T&T defends itself from cyber crimes or else it opens up its financial system to attacks that could hurt it credibility, said Microsoft country director, Frances Correia.

“We see T&T wanting to become the International Financial Centre (IFC). We talk of the size of the offshore banking industry and offshore businesses in the Caribbean. Even if one of those entities are affected in that eco-system, it will be the equivalent of what used to be called a run on a bank. You can least afford in this type of a industry for anything to happen,” Correia told the Business Guardian on May 28.

Marie-Michelle Strah, National Cloud Enterprise Architect and WW Enterprise Information Management Lead, Microsoft Corporation, who also spoke to the Business Guardian at the Hilton Trinidad Hotel and Conference Centre, St Ann’s, said prosecuting cyber crimes goes hand in hand with cloud technology and putting government services online.

She was visiting from the United States for a cloud computing conference in Trinidad.

She defined cyber crimes as crimes conducted using electronic means or against electronic targets.

“Hacking a bank would be an example of a cyber crime. Because people are new to cloud computing, it makes cyber crimes all the more easy. It is much harder to prosecute as the attackers are all invisible,” she said.

She said one of the themes that arose during the conference is the role of criminals working transnationally.

“It is not contained within borders, which is one for the things that make it so dangerous, especially within the Commonwealth, to which T&T belongs, and there is a lot of trade because of the economic and political history and any one country can be the point of attack. So each country is only as strong as the all of the nations in terms of cyber defences. So if one country is weak, it affects the others,” Strah said.